


something touched me deep inside the day the music died

by philthestone



Category: Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Post Infinity War, im still .... so sad bc of this film, it just be that way sometimes, when ur grief playlist consists only of 70s bops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 17:06:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14698599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: She’s kept silent almost the entirety of the trip, save a short period of time somewhere in the middle where she left the cockpit for about five minutes and came back holding what looked like the shittiest mp3 player known to man and then forced Tony to listen to Billy Joel for twenty minutes.





	something touched me deep inside the day the music died

**Author's Note:**

> [john mulaney voice] so my mom asked me yesterday if i was still devastated by infinity war and i said "no", you know, like a liar,
> 
> title's from don mclean, specifically a billy joel cover of don mclean, and ive never written tony before so i hope i did him justice

There’s a blipping orange light somewhere to Tony’s left that he’s decided is the only thing keeping him sane.

It’s consistent, you know? Just -- every two seconds. Turns on, turns off. It keeps shaking him out of his numbness, every time it blips. He feels like if that orange light wasn’t there, he’d stop being, just cease function altogether, float right out of his body and through the viewport and dissolve into the blackness of space in front of them.

Twenty-two jumps, Robocop had said. Twenty-two jumps til Earth. He has half an idea what a jump is and half an idea that they gotta take breaks in between, and that’s the extent to which he can think, right now. That’s all he’s got. A PhD in physics and electrical engineering, some of the most cutting edge technology on the planet Earth and decades of forcing Rhodey to watch old science fiction and all he can come up with is “I think I know what spaceships do”. 

Shitty, all around, he thinks, because she’d also said, “Watch the controls,” in her unsettlingly harsh and menacing voice, and then abandoned him in the cockpit. Her face had been tight -- had she been about to cry? Tony hasn’t cried. It feels like something is broken, maybe, and the only thing building in his throat is a scream -- and she hadn’t told him where she was going. Only that he should watch the controls.

So Tony’s watching the controls. If something big time goes wrong and they die, then.

You know.

The orange light blips. Ship looks new, more or less, the kind of new that’s gotten well lived in real fast. It’s only a little more sophisticated than what they’ve got on Earth, in terms of the mechanics of things, but more so -- different. Made for extended space travel, not like the quinjets, Tony thinks vaguely. He wouldn’t need the controls to tell him that; he saw the main hold when they first boarded. Well lived in, as he said. Clothes and weapons thrown around. Something that looked like a fridge. Holographic pictures on the walls.

Those were the hardest, he thinks -- those pictures. To be around. He doesn’t even have a phone on him, to make sure that he’s got at least one with the k --

Tony inhales sharply and looks back out the viewport. Still black. They’d passed a star cluster earlier, hours ago; he’d seen it through one of the smaller viewports in the hold. The colours were amazing. 

He clenches his hands to stop his fingers from trembling.

The orange light blips again. The empty pilot’s seat on his right seems to be mocking him, like it knows someone should be sitting in it. Fuck, Tony thinks, it’s not his fault Nebula disappeared. As if he actually wants her to be there, like her presence is actually comforting.

Tony doesn’t know. Pepper would say he has an inborn need to always be around people even if they hate him and maybe that’s true, Tony thinks, maybe that’s true. Pepper’s usually right.

He clenches his teeth so that he doesn’t throw up over the controls he’s supposed to be watching.

There’s another photo, he’s just noticed, not a holograph this time. Probably why it took so long for him to see it, because it’s literally scotch-taped to the bottom of the pilot’s seat controls. Jesus. Hard to see in the dark, but he can make out the two faces, the vague form of a woman smiling at the camera as someone kisses her on the cheek.

_ Fuck _ , this isn’t helping. 

“We have three jumps left,” says a voice, and Tony jumps so violently that he swears he nearly breaks one of his goddamn fingers against the controls he’s supposed to be so diligently keeping an eye on. The cyborg -- Nebula -- is standing in the shadow behind the pilot’s seat like she’s been there all along, staring expressionless at the dashboard.

No, not the dashboard -- the photograph.

She seems content not knowing who Tony is, more or less, and hasn’t made any attempt to communicate beyond the silent demand that he give her a location and a place to regroup. She never mentioned allies and Tony tries to not think about it, about whether they even have any left. Nebula looks like the word  _ allies _ isn’t in her vocabulary. She’s kept silent almost the entirety of the trip, save a short period of time somewhere in the middle where she left the cockpit for about five minutes and came back holding what looked like the shittiest mp3 player known to man and then forced them to listen to Billy Joel for twenty minutes.

Tony is not content not knowing who she is, though, because Tony is five seconds away from a full-blown panic attack and Pepper is right, present tense because any other tense would send him hurtling over the edge of something he can’t quantify right now, but Pepper is  _ right _ and Tony needs more than just orange lights to keep him sane so he opens his mouth and forces the words out.

“The woman -- Gamora.” He’s pretty sure Captain Kirk himself can hear the hysteria in his voice from all the way across the galaxy. That’s what the kid would’ve -- “You knew her too.”

Nebula remains silent for a long moment, still staring at the dashboard. Then she says,

“She was my sister.”

Tony swallows, nods, tries not to completely lose his cool. Conversation -- conversation helps. 

“So those other guys -- the in-laws, or something?”

He means it as a joke, which is something he realizes belatedly. He didn’t mean for it to be a serious question. 

Nebula remains silent, and stares at the dashboard.

Tony swallows around the knot in his throat. “Right,” he whispers, feeling the rasp of his voice. “Sorry.”

He can hear a faint noise, like boots shuffling on the floor, before the shadows in his periphery shift to show that she’s turned away as though to leave again.

“I’m sorry about your son,” she says, in that harsh and menacing voice, before she goes.

The orange light blips as Tony stares into the black of space, covers his mouth with a shaking hand, and begins to cry.


End file.
